From the New York Times bestselling coauthors of Under Fire–the riveting story of the kidnapping and murder of CIA Station Chief William Buckley.After a deadly terrorist bombing at the American embassy in Lebanon in 1983, only one man inside the CIA possessed the courage and skills to rebuild the networks destroyed in the blast: William Buckley. But the new Beirut station chief quickly became … station chief quickly became the target of a young terrorist named Imad Mughniyeh.
Beirut Rules is the pulse-by-pulse account of Buckley’s abduction, torture, and murder at the hands of Hezbollah terrorists. Drawing on never-before-seen government documents as well as interviews with Buckley’s co-workers, friends and family, Burton and Katz reveal how the relentless search for Buckley in the wake of his kidnapping ignited a war against terror that continues to shape the Middle East to this day.
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Fabulous, in-depth coverage of this terrifying slice of history.
A thorough account of William Buckley’s capture and the attempts to free him.
When this book came out, I was eager to read it, as I had served at the U.S Embassy in Beirut in the early 1980s, leaving there a year before the Beirut Embassy bombing and two years before Bill Buckley’s capture. I had met Buckley several times over the years and respected him. But when I learned that he had been sent to Beirut, I thought it was a terrible idea for several reasons. First, Buckley was a paramilitary guy and not a street case officer or even a manager of case officers. Second, he didn’t have the language skills for Beirut (Arabic, or, in a pinch, fluent French). Third, and most important, the guy knew too many Agency secrets to risk having him kidnapped. And kidnappings had been commonplace in Beirut for well over a decade.
So I knew from the start that the book was going to be a painful read. And while Burton and Katz know their way around the Middle East and terrorism, they are not veterans of the CIA’s clandestine service, and, in my view, were unlikely to get the inside dope about the episode from anyone in the Agency, officially or otherwise. Nonetheless the authors did an excellent job with BEIRUT RULES, considering their limitations, not least of which were the numerous government-imposed redactions after the fact. The book offers a detailed account of what is generally known about Buckley’s abduction and captivity and the U.S. government’s attempts to find and free him. It reads well, though slow at times due to the level of detail provided.
I have great sympathy for the people in the CIA, State Department, Pentagon, White House, and elsewhere in the U.S. government who were charged with finding and freeing Buckley, efforts that I believe were doomed from the start. I say doomed because: our government lacked the necessary intelligence access to his captors; the Iranians and their Lebanese Shia proxies had overwhelming reasons not to let him go; and even if we did know where Buckley was being held, the odds against saving him and the costs of doing so would have made any rational decision-maker decide against a rescue attempt.
Over the years, the Iranian mullahs have racked up an impressive score against the U.S. in the Middle East. From the Tehran Embassy takeover to the to the Beirut Embassy Bombings (yes, two of them!), to the Marine Barracks bombing in Lebanon, the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait, the kidnapping of two dozen Americans in Lebanon (Buckley was not the first by a long shot), the TWA Flight 847 hijacking, the Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, and countless attacks on U.S. military forces in Iraq. When is the U.S. government going to stop appeasing the murderers in Iran with planeloads of cash and other concessions and finally settle accounts with them so that other rogue regimes don’t follow the Iranian playbook?